Tag: eighth grade

This is one of the things that scared me the most about homeschooling. How was I going to teach multiple grades at the same time?! It seemed like a daunting task when I first started looking into homeschooling, however it doesn’t seem that tricky now.

Today i’ll share how I homeschool multiple grades at the same time…

For those of you who are new here, I currently have an 8th grader, 5th grader, 2nd grader, preschooler, and a 2 year old* (*not pictured below).

When we first started homeschooling I had a 3rd grader, kindergartner, and a 2 year old. My days then would be filled with teaching my 3rd grader all day long, while my kindergartner would work next to us on; cutting practice, writing practice, puzzles, etc. Then while my 3rd grader had some independent reading time, I would be teaching my kindergartner to read, or doing any other work with him that needed to be done.

Now that I have 4 students things have gotten harder and easier all at the same time. Harder in the sense that sometimes they all need my help at the same time. Which can be very chaotic. Easier in the sense that my 2 oldest children are pretty much independent workers, so they need very little instruction from me.

The one thing that I have found helps me to teach multiple grades at the same time, is to have all the kids working on the same subject at the same time. For example; all my kids do math at the same time, then they all move on to English, then vocabulary, and so on and so on.

This makes it easier for my brain, in the fact that I don’t have to switch between graphing equations to diagramming sentences in a matter of seconds. My brain can fully focus on math, then on English, and so on and so on.

Another thing, like I just talked about, is my 2 oldest are pretty much independent workers. This helps a lot when you have multiple grades. But let’s say you have a 1st grader and a 2nd grader, both of which need a lot of instruction from you. How do you do it?! My advice would be to teach them the same thing, for example; last year we did My Father’s World curriculum for my oldest 2 and i was teaching them the same things for history, science, and Bible. Of course my oldest child would then have a little bit of extra assignments in those areas because of this grade level.

My best advice I can give you, is to find what works best for you and your kids. That could be teaching one grade level in the morning, and a different grade level in the afternoon. Or teaching different grade levels on different days. Just do whatever works best for your family, and don’t be afraid to switch things up if it’s not working for you. That’s one of the perks of homeschooling, the flexibility to change things up as needed!!

This year i’m going to be sharing with you my kids homeschool schedules.

Today i’m starting with my 8th graders homeschool schedule for the first semester of the 2018/2019 homeschool year.

Monday-Thursday

8:00 – Math

9:00 – English

9:30 – Vocabulary

9:45 – Language Arts

10:00 – History

10:30 – Science

11:00 – Reading

11:30 – Handwriting

11:45 – Piano

12:00 – Lunch Break

1:00 – Art

1:20 – Spanish

1:50 – Typing

2:00 – Schools out

Since we do year round schooling, we don’t do school on Fridays. I plan on sharing more about our year round schedule later on this month, so if you are interested in hearing more about that, be on the look out for that blog post coming out in the next few weeks.

I’ve made his schedule into a handy printable, which you can download for yourself for free, by clicking the link below!

Language Arts & Literature: The Good and The Beautiful level 1-5 – This is a free curriculum!! And like i said above, it covers: phonics/reading, spelling, grammar/punctuation, literature, and art. I’m starting him on a very low level because he does need some extra help with spelling and i’m sure by the end of the year we will finish level 5.

So that’s everything, curriculum wise, we have going on this year. I hope you enjoyed hearing about our choices, and if you homeschool your kids, i’d love to hear what curriculum you are using this school year!

I started this tradition of interviewing my children on their first day of school, when we first started homeschooling back in 2013! Ever since then it has become one of my favorite things of our whole back to school process.

Here are their interviews for this school year…

Samuel

My name is Samuel

I am 13 years old

The yummiest food to eat is Grilled Cheese with pickles

My favorite show to watch is Gortimer Gibbons Life on Normal Street

The best thing about school is getting done

The worst thing about school is waking up early

The coolest person on Earth is Mommy

I am really super good at being creative

My favorite color is Silver

The best place in the world to be is outside

When i grow up i want to skydive

I really really do not like to eat raisins

My best friend is Jackson

When i was little i used to dance

3 words that tell about me: creative, smart, funny

This year i hope to learn Spanish

Dasean

My name is Dasean

I am 10 years old

The yummiest food to eat is all foods

My favorite show to watch is Nexo Knights

The best thing about school is Math

The worst thing about school is siblings complaining

The coolest person on Earth is Mommy

I am really super good at building LEGOS

My favorite color is Red

The best place in the world to be is home

When i grow up i want to be a master of building LEGOS

I really really do not like to eat raisins

My best friend is Jackson

When i was little i used to suck my thumb

3 words that tell about me: funny, smart, intelligent

This year i hope to learn fractions

Karina

My name is Karina

I am 7 years old

The yummiest food to eat is strawberries

My favorite show to watch is Son of Bigfoot

The best thing about school is Math

The worst thing about school is nothing

The coolest person on Earth is Mommy

I am really super good at typing

My favorite color is pink

The best place in the world to be is with my mommy

When i grow up i want to sing

I really really do not like to eat broccoli

My best friend is Mommy

When i was little i used to drink milk

3 words that tell about me: cute, funny, a princess

This year i hope to learn how to be a mom

Cruz

My name is Cruz

I am 4 years old

The yummiest food to eat is bread

My favorite show to watch is Halloween kid shows on YouTube

The best thing about school is B

The worst thing about school is nothing

The coolest person on Earth is Cruz

I am really super good at playdough

My favorite color is Red

The best place in the world to be is with family

When i grow up i want to be Lincoln’s age

I really really do not like to eat bird poop

My best friend is Lincoln

When i was little i used to sleep in a crib

3 words that tell about me: funny, silly, gooey

This year i hope to learn ABC’s

In case you are curious, you can read some of their previous interviews below:

As you can tell by the title of this blog post we have started back up with homeschool, for our 6th year of homeschooling!

This year i have an 8th grader, 5th grader, 2nd grader, and preschooler.

*Seriously why is it so hard to get 4 people to look at the camera at the same time and smile. This was the best picture i got.*

I plan on sharing all our curriculum choices in a separate blog post, so be on the lookout for that.

But as far as how our first day of school went, it was pretty good. We are doing a new schedule this year so of course that takes time to get used to. I might share our schedule in a separate blog post, if that something you guys would like to see, let me know. As we were doing our school work i realized some of our stuff hadn’t arrived yet and i also realized that i forgot to order a few things, so that was our one hiccup during the day. Nothing major though, and we were able to move along with the day.

Cruz, my preschooler, loves doing school. He keeps asking for more work, gosh how i love that age! I wish my 8th grader was as eager to do school work.

I really wish we had a fun, first day back at school tradition, but the only thing we do is take these pictures and do interviews, which will also be in a separate blog post. I was thinking though that we might do something fun on Friday to celebrate our first week of being back to school. Not sure yet, but i will let you know if i come up with something.